Overview: Slicing images

Before Fireworks, manually slicing images was a labor-intensive process. Slicing images has these advantages:

	You can optimize each piece of a graphic separately, resulting in smaller, faster-loading files.
	You can export some parts of an image as GIF and other parts as JPEG, to best use the strengths of each export format.
	You can design pages to reuse some of the same graphics from page to page, changing only the slices that have unique content, which results in a faster Web site. Also, you can edit and replace a single slice graphic without having to upload all the slices of an image again.
	You can create rollovers with slices.

This chapter introduces basic slicing concepts. Chapter 15, "Creating Buttons" and Chapter 16, "Creating Advanced Rollovers" describe techniques for creating a variety of interactive graphics using slices.